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This is the official blog of Northern Arizona slam poet Christopher Fox Graham. Begun in 2002, and transferred to blogspot in 2006, FoxTheBlog has recorded more than 670,000 hits since 2009. This blog cover's Graham's poetry, the Arizona poetry slam community and offers tips for slam poets from sources around the Internet. Read CFG's full biography here. Looking for just that one poem? You know the one ... click here to find it.

Friday, July 11, 2003

Blunt Club y Hip Hop

Current Mood: mellowCurrent Music: NIN "the Wretched"Dropped by the Blunt Club at PI last night with KuK and Tony D, as a nice little break before the Sedona Slamboree this weekend.

The place has some good air, tight rhymes, and cheap beer. Tony D got hammered but performed well. A dude from Philly dropped a political piece with some great rhythms and rhymes that set the night off because another performer was from NYC. Spitting lines about dissing the flag and suggesting 9-11 was a hoax ... not a good idea sometimes. This NYC first off started shouting, then a full on mooning, then lost it at the end, violently shouting and punching the stage after the kid finished. Ah, the power of words.

From fuckin' out of nowhere, Mike 360 showed up from Albuquerque. I met him in ALB and Seattle when he was big ball of hate, damn-the-white-man rage, and he totally missed the point of slam. Have a good time. He's lost the militancy, still has an edge, and his political poem was beautiful. Tony D reported having heard the same poem in ALB and their regional tournament. What a flash.

I did "He Needs it Bad" for Tony D. I could milk it without a time limit. It's always a crowd pleaser but not a particularly good poem; it's just a list performed over the top. But it was something good to leave a first time impression with the hosts; being able to play off previous poets. I scored 2nd place and won some tickets to a DJ contest.

Seeing the Drunken Immortals was cool because it's been a long time, but after the hip-hop I heard in St. Louis, Detroit, NYC, and Chicago on the Save the Male Tour, the locals are dull and repetitive. The bass was too hot, the treble too low, and there were no original beats; it was 3 minutes of the same rhythm with rhymes thrown over, like a pack of kids rapping to a CD or the radio. If you're a live band, fucking use it.

CFG the slam poet

Fox the Poet

Christopher Fox Grahamis a Montana-born boy raised in Arizona to be a poet, artist, and singer with unending wanderlust. He's fascinated with art and other shiny things, a good story will keep him captivated and silent as he soaks you in.

In truth, he is good at only three things: using language, kissing, and driving.

He has performed for MTV and on The Travel Channel's "Your Travel Guide" episode of Sedona. Aside from winning more than 100 poetry slams, he's published four books of poetry, most recently The Opposite of Camouflage, and won the 2012 Dylan Thomas Award for Excellence in the Written and Spoken Word.

A slam poet since 2001, he currently hosts the bimonthly Sedona Poetry Slam in West Sedona.

For nearly four years, he was the senior Copy Editor of the Sedona Red Rock News, and an arts reporter and a columnist. He wrote a weekly column "Sedona Underground," about the city's art scene. After leaving in May 2008, he was asked to return as Assistant Managing Editor in October 2009. He was promoted to News Editor in April 2012 and in August 2012 was promoted to Managing Editor, overseeing the Sedona Red Rock News,The Camp Verde Journal, Cottonwood Journal Extra, The Scene and The Village View.

He has won numerous personal and editorial newsroom awards from the Arizona Newspapers Association, including three awards for Best Headline.

He was the managing editor of Kudos, a weekly arts and entertainment publication of the Verde Independent. He was also managing editor of The Villager, a weekly news publication in the Village of Oak Creek.

He is one the six coordinators of GumptionFest a kickass, annual, one-day grassroots arts festival held in Sedona, this year in September. More than 100 artists and bands exhibit their work for free to more than 1,200 people.

In 2005, he founded the Sedona Poetry Open Mic, which he hosted biweekly at Java Love Cafe on second and fourth Tuesdays until 2012. A former venue included Random Acts of Coffee, in Sedona, which closed in June 2005. The venue named a drink after him which one can order an various coffeehouses in Sedona. The "Topher": A large soy chai with two (or three) shots of espresso. Serve iced or hot. He was member of the city of Sedona Child and Youth Commission for two years and chairman for another two years before the commission was dissolved in 2008.

He has been unofficially named "The Voice of the Underground," in Sedona for his column "Sedona Underground" that appeared every Friday in The Scene. for more than three years, featuring more than 150 artists.

He won the 2004 NORAZ Poets Grand Slam, the 2005 Arizona All-Star Poetry Slam, and was a member of the 2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012 and 2013 Flagstaff National Poetry Slam Teams. He was also a National Poetry Slam bout manager in 2003, venue manager in 2011, and Sedona Slammaster in 2012, 2013 and 2014, sponsoring the city's first three Sedona National Poetry Slam Teams.

He believes that all slam poets are Jedis.

He has been thrown out of six movie theaters, 18 bars, a Las Vegas nightclub with his girlfriend, a public pool, two malls, four golf courses, one bowling alley, five dorms, one airport, one pet store, a now-defunct nonprofit poetry organization ... and Canada. Seriously.